Contemporary art trends and news from Asia and beyond

About Art Radar Asia

Art Radar Asia News conducts original research and scans global news sources to bring you selected topical stories about the taste-changing, news-making and the up and coming in Asian contemporary art.

The first four days featured lectures and slide shows by some of India’s best known contemporary artists. For the first day Bharti Kher whose work encompasses sculpture, paintings and installations, delivered her talk. Her featured works tackled the topic of “traditional vis-à-vis modern” while at the same time explored the issues of feminism, class, identity and race.

The third day was for Raqs Media Collective, a group of three media practitioners – Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. In addition to their degrees in Mass Communication, the trio has extensive experience when it comes to curating exhibitions and planning events, as well as working with various writers, architects and directors that have greatly contributed to the contemporary art of India.

Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra’s collaborative work in several diverse media such as painting, sculpture, video and fashion have also been well-received.

The event was an interactive and absorbing series inviting guests, students, critics and art lovers to explore more than the usual two or three-dimensional way of experiencing art. Talks from the artists themselves provided an insight into artistic creation and people from different areas of the industry provided another kind of perspective in viewing the works and Indian art in general.

The National Lalit Kala Akademi and its Chandigarh chapter, the Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi are institutions established for the promotion and preservation of the fine arts of India.

At a seminar held in London in September 2009 organised by ArtInsight three London-based photography market experts from a fund, a gallery and a major auction house shared their views on the most promising opportunities and interesting trends in photography today.

We attended the seminar and have teased out surprising facts and intriguing assertions for you to mull.

Background to the photography market

First photography auction was held in 1971 initiated by Sotheby’s.

Over the past 15 years, this medium has out-performed every other major medium including sculpture, prints, painting and sculpture.

In its early history this sector of the art market encountered resistance with buyers concerned that the works were not unique and therefore were not a viable investment. The development of controlled limited editioning in the seventies helped allay fears and the market saw steady but modest growth.

This all changed in 1989/1990 which marked the 150th anniversary of the introduction of photography and the market experienced a 45% leap in sales. Further steady growth marked the next 15 years until 2005 after which sales took off. 2006 saw the highest price ever paid for a photograph …US$2.6m.

Today photography accounts for 2% of total auction sales compared with 75% for painting and 11% for drawing and watercolour.

Photography has proved to be one of the least volatile sectors in the art market.

9 photographs have broken the US$1m level including work by Japanese-American Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Why has interest in and sales of photography increased?

Nobody know for sure but various reasons have been offered including relative affordability, the introduction of controlled editioning, a loyal customer base and increased market transparency.

Photography trends

There is growing interest and, arguably, opportunities in the following four subsectors of photography:

fashion and celebrity photography

reportage-style photography

phot0graphs recording ephemeral art forms such as performance art and land art

“slice of life” photography – a vernacular style dealing the everyday real life as its subject

Brett Rogers of the Photographers Gallery noted the development of a sub-genre she called “constructive fiction” which blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction crossing the techniques of the photo-journalist and fine artist.

In an interesting twist she forsees gains for collectors of photography books and advises buying first editions and examples of rare, early books. Explaining that books usually feature the very best of an artist’s work, photography books can deliver enormous joy as well as potential financial dividends.

Matt Carey-Williams, Director of Christies Post-War and Contemporary Art recommended photographs from the 1930s to 1950s – a seminal period in the development of photography as an art form – and which he believes are “massively undervalued”.

Global opportunities in photography

During question time, the panel was asked where they saw opportunities in emerging countries and the following recommendations were made.

Visit Sharjah and Biennial and Art Dubai to see interesting work from the Middle East and Iran.

Explore Central Asian countries.

Korea has huge potential.

Female Indian artists are producing some interesting work.

It was agreed that Chinese photography seemed “a little old” though Matt Carey-Williams said that it would look “remarkably fresh again in twenty years”.

Current challenges facing the market

Conservation of photographs– One of the most pressing challenges today is developing guidelines for acceptable conservation work. Colour photographs fade and some artists and galleries will ”refresh” (reprint) the works and some refuse. As museums are beginning to collect contemporary photography on a large scale, panellists felt that it was likely that this issue would be resolved

Is photography a separate genre? – Recognising that artists now work in many media. there are questions about whether it is appropriate or useful to dedicate parts of the market such as galleries or funds exclusively to photography. Matt Carey-Williams explained that as an auctioneer he regards artists as artists first and photographers second. Brett Rogers noted that this trend away from a specialisation in photography is due to a change in the way art schools teach. A consequence of a broadening of focus though is that less attention is given to technique. Image is more important than technique for young photographers today.

(Editor’s note: It is may also be a sign of market maturity – specialist focus marketing and promotion is necessary for an emerging section of the market. Today many if not most contemporary art galleries show photography as a matter of course. Just as photography is integral to and fully-accepted in today’s art world on equal terms with other media we at Art Radar are looking forward to the day Asian art is given equal weight with other geographies in art media and we can drop Asia from our name).

Who are the top artists at art fairs?– Mar 09 – The extent to which Asian artists is excluded is painfully evident and explains why Art Radar chooses to focus on Asian art in a small attempt at redress.

Thank heavens for youtube which has given us a whole new way to appreciate art and learn about artists.

In these video interviews, internationally-acclaimed Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto gives us a glimpse of his warm personality. Intelligent and mild-mannered, he responds with self-deprecating humour to questions about the source of his inspiration and his innovative approach to traditional photographic techniques.

What we found particularly fascinating in these videos is how Sugimoto uses one series of work to inform and serve as inspiration for later ones. In the T Magazine video, he describes how his earlier work with waxworks and still forms inspired him to photograph mannequins instead of live models and the resulting images have a sculptural quality, an interest which he explored in his ‘Joe Series’ based on Richard Serra sculptures.

T Magazine: It’s all about Hiroshi Sugimoto – 4: 29 – Feb 2008 – fashion as sculpture – In his first fashion commission for the New York Times style magazine, Sugimoto describes why he photographs fashion on mannequins rather than live models and how he develops his ideas some of which lie latent for 30 or 40 years. “There is always something being cooked in my noodle”

Art 21: Hiroshi Sugimoto – 1:27 mins – Feb 2008 – Photography as a tool to explore time – A video snippet of the delightfully warm Hiroshi Sugimoto explaining how he shuns sophisticated and computer-generated techniques. He demonstrates how he manipulates light with shades in his Paris studio: difficult to control he says but still the way to make the best pictures.

Hiroshi Sugimoto Portrait series

Hiroshi Sugimoto Part 1 – 6:50 mins – 2007 – Waxworks and the ‘Portrait’ series – As his work is being installed in Villa Manin in his first serious show in Italy, Sugimoto talks about his photographs of wax images of the Pope, Lady Diana, Holbein’s Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth. Sugimoto explains that when he makes the images of the waxworks he aims to recreate the original photos and paintings on which the wax works are based.

Hiroshi Sugimoto talks – 3:55 mins – Oct 2006 – at his ‘Joe Series’ exhibition at the Pulitzer in 2006 – In 2003 Sugimoto visited the Pulitzer Foundation to photograph the building designed by fellow countryman Tadao Ando but quickly turned his attention to Richard Serra’s sculpture Joe installed in the courtyard and dedicated to the late Joseph Pulitzer. He discusses the resulting photographs and his ‘twice as infinity’ technique in which he focuses beyond infinity to make the images.